Thursday Afternoon
by LyricalSinger
Summary: A glimpse into life in 221B between cases. A/N: This is a gift for Semperfortis.


Thursday Afternoon

It was a grey, drizzly afternoon and things were calm in 221B. Sherlock and John had just come off a rather strenuous case that had lasted close to a week and had them running around London like chickens with their heads cut off. Right now, they were enjoying the quiet time that comes just after a case is finished but before Sherlock becomes bored with his forced inactivity.

This particular Thursday afternoon, John was relaxing in his chair with a half-finished cup of tea and a crumb-dusted plate resting on the small table on his left. There was a fire going in the fireplace and the flames cast a golden light on the cover of the two-month old issue of the BMJ that he was reading.

Sherlock could be found, as usual, perched on one of the kitchen chairs, doing something unspeakable to a pig's heart. Turns out it is quite handy having a grateful client who also runs a small, but well-stocked, butcher shop!

The only sounds in the flat were the quiet humming of the refrigerator as the compressor cycled on and off, the _skritch_ of pencil on paper as Sherlock wrote down his notes on his experiment and a barely audible rustle as John turned the pages in the Journal.

The silence was comfortable, like being nestled under your grandma's quilt on a cold winter night. The two men felt no need to fill the silence with meaningless noise; rather, they had reached the point in their friendship where they were certain in their mutual affection and felt no need to impress the other with exploits of their past.

The afternoon waned and Sherlock finally leaned back in his chair and dropped his pencil onto the table. Blinking owlishly in the dim light, the curly-haired man felt his vertebrae pop as he stretched his arms over his head and rotated his shoulders.

Standing up from his microscope, Sherlock became aware of a difference in the atmosphere in the flat. Rather than the rustling of paper, there was now a faint snuffling sound emanating from the sitting room, reminiscent of a hedgehog sniffing at the underbrush. Glancing over from the kitchen into the sitting room, Sherlock had an unobstructed view of the back of John's chair and just peeking out over the back was a thatch of golden-ash-silver hair. In the intervening hours, John had slid down in his chair and was now obviously asleep.

Walking silently to the sofa, Sherlock picked up the afghan Mrs. Hudson had made for him last winter and turned to his friend. Sherlock had to smile at the sight before him. John had indeed slid down in his chair and the left side of his face was now mashed up against the wing of the back; he had unconsciously shifted towards the waning heat coming from the last of the embers in the fireplace. The BMJ was held loosely in his right hand and was quickly heading south.

Knowing that the thud the journal would make as it hit the floor would wake John, Sherlock leaned in and as John's fingers relaxed and the magazine began to slip, he snatched it up and placed it on the table. Unfolding the afghan, Sherlock then tucked it gently around John, making sure to cover his shoulders. John's left shoulder had been acting up recently due to the damp and Sherlock was determined to mitigate any further discomfort if he could.

Smiling fondly at his friend, Sherlock sat in his own chair and began leafing through his copy of Forensic Magazine.

Twenty minutes later, when Mrs. Hudson entered the flat to retrieve her teapot, she was greeted with the sight of John asleep in his chair and covered with the purple and white afghan. Sherlock, meanwhile, was curled up in his chair, dead to the world, with an orange shock blanket pooled at his feet. Mrs. Hudson picked up the blanket and, re-covering the Detective, she kissed him lightly on the forehead. She then turned to John, resettled the afghan around the man's shoulders and gently ran her hand across his head.

"Sleep well, boys," she whispered as she tiptoed out of the flat and closed the door quietly behind her.


End file.
